Constable: Roller coaster year ends on a high note for both kidney recipient and donor
College student Ally Hembd has spent most of 2020 sheltering in her Wheeling home, hooked up to a dialysis machine and hoping to find a donor who would give her a kidney and a new chance at life. The upbeat 24-year-old got that life-altering kidney in August and returned to the hospital this week after showing symptoms of the coronavirus.
She tested negative for COVID-19 as of Saturday night. While any illness can be dangerous for someone whose immune system is coping with a strange kidney, Hembd is expected to recover with the care she's getting at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
"I trust my teams and doctors here immensely," Hembd says in a text from her hospital bed, insisting this temporary setback doesn't change the message of her journey this year. "I think it's a great idea to give people some hope by reading a wholesome story with a good ending before the holidays."
She has experience making that trip from the worst to the best.
"Before my transplant was horrible. And COVID in general has been horrible," says Hembd, who has been struggling with Stage 4 chronic kidney disease since shortly after her 2014 graduation from Hersey High School. "But the transplant was incredible news."
Robin Paolino, 37, of Aurora gave Hembd a new kidney, and both say they are thrilled with the result.
At the start of 2020, Hembd barely had the energy to take a single computer science class at Harper Community College in Palatine, where most of the other students were 18-year-old men. Then COVID-19 restrictions took away that brief brush with normalcy. "Once that shut down, I was completely at home 24/7," she says.
Starting in November 2018, four days a week, five hours a day, Hembd was tethered to tubes moving her blood through a pair of dialysis machines stacked next to her heated recliner in what used to be the family living room. The machines did the work of her two damaged kidneys - removing the waste, salt and extra water from her blood and keeping her blood pressure, potassium, sodium and bicarbonate at safe levels.
The only way people get off dialysis machines is through a new kidney or death. The typical waiting time for a donated kidney in Illinois is more than seven years, and only half the people who rely on dialysis live past five years. Hembd's break came because of a car window sticker thought up by her parents, Ron and Lynne Hembd, that read, "Daughter Needs Kidney. Blood Type O," and included an email address.
Paolino, a 2001 Waubonsie Valley High School graduate and high-performance coach for Transformational Growth Partners, had just moved back to Aurora after living in Atlanta when she saw the decal on the car of her neighbor, who happened to be a friend of one of Hembd's sisters.
"The car was in the parking garage, so I saw it every day," Paolino says. "I wondered, 'Is that something I'd be open to?'"
She researched the topic of donating a kidney and came to the conclusion that she could handle it physically and mentally. She sent Hembd an email, but a wary Hembd didn't get too excited after Paolino submitted her application on Feb. 6.
"That's what happened numerous times with other potential donors," Hembd says. A dozen potential donors were eliminated immediately and another 10 were rejected later because they weren't a good match or they had health issues.
Going through extensive testing at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Paolino found out she was a suitable donor on the night of July 2.
"I will never forget that day. It was so powerful," says Paolino, who begged the nurse, "Please let me tell her."
As Hembd donned her latex gloves and was preparing for another dialysis treatment, her cellphone rang.
"This is happening! This is it! I'm the donor!" Paolino said.
"I immediately started crying, and then she started crying, and we were just sharing the joy and the love," Hembd remembers. Hembd's parents and sister, Theresa, were home and joined in the celebration.
"They were cheering and stuff, and my dad started tearing up," says Hembd, who quickly developed a friendship with Paolino. "She doesn't know me. Or at least, she didn't know me. It's incredible. She's just that kind of person."
On Aug. 13, the day after Hembd's 24th birthday, Paolino went to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago for the pre-op to make sure everything was a go.
"My way of protecting myself was thinking, 'Well, this isn't going to happen,'" Hembd says. Even when doctors scheduled the transplant for Aug. 28, Hembd worried.
"There's a lot that can happen in two weeks. It was kind of torture," Hembd says. "You'd think after waiting years for a transplant, I'd be totally fine waiting a couple of weeks."
Her parents took her to the hospital that morning. Dr. Joseph Leventhal, director of kidney transplantation at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, performed the surgery to harvest Paolino's kidney. Then, Dr. Derrick A. Christopher implanted the healthy kidney on Hembd's right side in Chicago. Hembd came home two days later.
"That first week at home, I felt really content and happy," Hembd says. Complications sent her back to Northwestern and later to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. Paolino also had some pain during recovery. But both say they are feeling "pretty great" these days.
"Getting off dialysis is a huge thing," says Leventhal. A donated kidney "normalizes life expectancy very significantly," the doctor adds, noting most kidneys from living donors perform for 20 years. He says doctors at Northwestern and elsewhere are making progress on efforts to reduce the risk of rejection and make donations easier and last longer.
"There's a misconception that you have to be a close relative (to donate). Nothing could be further from the truth," Leventhal says. "Don't fixate on the incompatibility, because we have ways of getting around that."
Rejected donors often can change their status by losing weight or getting new treatment for an underlying condition. People who aren't good matches for a loved one can donate a kidney to a stranger, then get a kidney back through the kidney paired donation that Leventhal calls "our swap-ortunity." For more information on donation, visit nmlivingdonor.org and organdonor.gov.
"It was an amazing experience," Paolino says. "This is exactly what I'm supposed to do. It's a spiritual thing to do, also. I feel really good about it now. Just hearing from her makes me feel great. It really moves my heart."
Years ago, Paolino lost a 24-year-old friend to cancer. And, like Hembd, Paolino comes from a family of sisters.
"I hope to influence others," Paolino says, crediting the support she got from Laurie Lee, a former Hawthorn Woods resident who now lives in Cary. Lee donated a kidney in 2016 and now is a board member of Transplant Village, which supports donors, recipients and their families.
With her new kidney and outlook, Hembd is applying to a long list of colleges. She says she'd love to get a master's degree and become a biostatistician working in the medical field to determine the best ways to treat diseases and disorders.
"It's a little hard to remember how I felt all those years ago," Hembd says. "I feel incredibly hopeful for the future, more than I have for a long time. It's really great to be able to give people some good news during this crapshoot of a year."